Tuesday, March 13, 2007

There is a new Internet club, called Club Penguin, that parents are probably finding their kids visiting. Club Penguin is a website where kids live second lives masquerading as chubby aquatic birds. With the fear of adults posing as penguins, they should still monitor their child's online activities. Club Penguin does have sophisticated safety features that filter anything that looks like an E-mail address, phone number, or profanity out of the children's chats. In fact, a Canada-based consulting firm that trains police about child safety on the Web uses Club Penguin as a positive model and the Better Business Bureau awarded the site a kids' privacy seal of approval. The monitoring of activity on the Web is still stressed. Just the hours of activity a child can spend on the Internet affects how they interact in their daily life. They need to limit their time so they have time to read books, play with other children and interact with the rest of the family. Hmmm, I think I need to take this advice!

Information gathered from the March 19, 2007 issue of U.S. News & World Report.